NIV Study Bible Update

Zondervan has announced the upcoming release of the NIV Study Bible for Windows Mobile and Palm. We are doing this product in partnership with Zondervan. It will include our Windows Mobile and Palm readers (PocketBible and MyBible) plus the option of a one-year subscription to iPocketBible.com for iPhone and iPod Touch users.

The NIV Study Bible has undergone a 25% revision to its over 20,000 in-text study notes. It also includes a comprehensive topical index. Zondervan will be selling a CD-ROM version of the product through Christian bookstores and other retail establishments. Laridian will sell it through its Web site. The release is slated to correspond to a reprint of the print edition of the NIV Study Bible coming out this fall.

We are pleased to be able to work with publishers during this phase of a new release. The timing allows both the print and electronic products to benefit from the promotion of the other and reduces questions about the availability of each. Forward-thinking publishers are beginning to do this more and more — thinking about electronic rights at the same time they’re releasing major new reference works in print. Zondervan is among that group.

We don’t have further details such as pricing at this time. We just wanted to let you know about it as soon as we could. You should see this product in September from us, and in Christian bookstores for the Christmas season.

I would encourage you to make a full feature version (not web based) for the new IPhone. I have been a long time user of MyBible for Palm but have set that aside. I am using a bible program for my IPhone but would much rather have MyBible. How about it? What are your plans?

Our Web-based iPocketBible is more “full-featured” than the native apps currently available at the App Store.

We’ve talked extensively on this subject. Select the iPhone link at the left to read all about it. This article summarizes everything in one place, but there is other information in some of the later articles and in my comments to user comments.

I have used your products for years with palm and ipaq and now ordered a subscription for my iphone. I ordered the NIV but it isn’t coming through to my iphone and I need assistance to enjoy what I purchased. Thank you.

We have not announced a release date for an update to MyBible. There is one coming; as we have said before we need to update MyBible to support synchronizing with the desktop.

Perhaps a more interesting question is to ask when we’re going to see an update to the Palm OS. It’s pretty much the same today as it was ten years ago. They’re losing market share and consumer interest.

I think the subscription based model is a bit greedy to be honest. I bought your bible program for my old clie palm device and several translations, and the software was fantastic. I was looking forward to doing the same thing on my iPhone, but I need offline access, and I’m not going to pay an ongoing fee.

Not sure what this has to do with the NIV Study Bible but we appreciate your feedback on the iPocketBible.com subscription.

You’ll be interested to know we’re working on a native iPhone app. Bibles and reference books will be resident on your iPhone, and all the Bibles you purchased for your Clie will be available for free download onto your iPhone. (I know that’s a little greedy, giving you something for nothing while the competition forces you to purchase your Bibles again for their iPhone app, but that’s just the way we are.)

I have had a Palm Treo which I had loaded with Laridian software and plenty of translations, including the NIV study Bible. The Treo and I were in a minor wreck and it was injured.

I have replaced it with a Blackberry Curve and am now wanting to get my Laridian software and resources. All I see is a Noah 4 reader and some translations. No NIV study guide or anything else. Other platforms have much more offered.

My question is, are there plans to make the other resources available to the Blackberry platform? If yes, how soon? If yes, will I still be able to download the translations and other resources that I bought for the Palm Treo?

I am missing my resources and am hopeful there is still a solution from Laridian.

The Noah program we sell for Blackberry is developed by BEIKS (www.beiks.com). We’re supportive of their programming efforts but don’t control their schedule or feature list. If you are interested in seeing the product line for Blackberry expand, you should contact them. Contact information is on the Web site.

All we have for BlackBerry are the Bibles you see listed at our site. If you have purchased one of those Bibles for another platform, you’ll automatically be able to download it for BlackBerry if you purchase Noah. In fact, you can already download the Noah versions of the Bibles now if you go to your download page and uncheck the option that says “only show products for readers I own”. You just won’t be able to do anything with them until you purchase Noah.

By way of explanation, the BlackBerry is crippled from our perspective because it uses Java instead of C or C++. We can’t port our existing software to it without writing it from the ground up. Compare this to the iPhone which uses Objective-C but supports C++ also. We cut our development time in half or more because we can port all kinds of Windows/Windows Mobile/Palm code to it. So we’ve been happy to work with BEIKS to make more Bibles available for Noah.

The NIV Study Bible Notes for PocketBible for Windows Mobile, MyBible for Palm and iPocketBible for iPhone is available at our site now. If you own the previous version of the NIV Study Bible Notes you will be receiving an email making this announcement and offering a discount. At this point it is, unfortunately, still not available for sale for PocketBible for Windows.

What about the study bible for the iPhone? Is there really a monthly subscription for this kind of thing? I would really be interested in an iPhone version, because I don’t use a PC, I only have Apple computers.

I believe the NIV Study Bible is available on the iPocketBible.com site. Yes, our current iPhone product is a monthly subscription. We’re working on a native PocketBible for iPhone that will be a one-time cost like our other readers and the Bibles and reference books would reside on your phone, like our other readers. You can get more info by clicking the iPhone topic in the list on the left.